Deleted 2, the first, stickied topic in the War Room, is your best place to start. What steps are you taking to install clean templates? It shouldn't be that hard. If I, croi the clueless, can do it successfully, anyone can

If you already know this, I apologise for being redundant, but you may wish to look at Simlogical for alternative schools. Nothing screws up a medieval hood quite like a school bus.

After deleting the sim families in the sim bin via the lot debugger and then deleting the character stubs in SDSC and SCOR, I saw that the family names remained listed in Family Information. I deleted them there too, and everything seems ok, but I don't recall that happening before. Did I do something wrong?

I mainly wanted a clean vacation hood. I screwed up. However, I now have a lovely clean main hood as well and no angst, other than trying to sort out which one of several different and contradictory methods for generating vacation townies outlined on this site is the most viable.

Won't it regenerate anyway, even if I do nothing, the next time I load the game? I quite like some of the families, but not enough to put up with all of them, and I realise it's all-or-none.

Also, given my original post, I suppose my ineptitude and general nitwittedness is already obvious, so I may as well ask. I think I have the clean templates process semi-sorted, but I would be very grateful if someone would be willing to walk me through the BV deletion/install step-by-step. After 27 pages in the Empty and Cleaned-up Templates thread alone, and dozens more in other, related ones, I am more confused now than when I started. The other EPs seem much more straightforward.

You mean...be organised enough to make package files before moving characters in? Me? Of course not. *sigh*
I moved the few lot files out before deleting the folder. (Not sure where they should go.) Now I just have to find the correct clean templates before I reload my game. C'est la vie simulée.

OK, I just did something incredibly fucking dumb to my game. I finally got around to installing Apartment Life a couple of weeks ago and was poking around in Belladonna Cove when I thought to add a vacation destination. After doing so, I realised they weren't clean templates and I had all the default fugly EA NPCs, so I entered "delete all characters"... I had never used it before, had forgotten reading that it was a VBT, and thought that would only affect the sub hood I was in, not the base hood. To my great dismay, I discovered my mistake. I started searching here for advice. Oooops.

So...how badly did I screw things up? Needless to say, I don't have a backup. (When I screw things up, I do a good job.) Can I package some of the houses I built/altered, or would it be safer not to? Should I just delete the whole folder? Most of the references I can find concerning using this command are from 2005 or '06, and I'm not sure the info is still accurate or complete.

Make sure that any Syberspunke Risky WooHoo (or any other woohoo hacks for that matter) are updated. In a classic example of EA wonkiness, the pet coding uses parts of what was the sim woohoo coding in earlier expansions.

I want a way to allow a step-parent to adopt a spouse's child without severing the family relationship with the birth parents or removing them from the family tree. Ideally it would give a unique memory as well--something suitably sim-sappy such as, "Adopted xxx--now my beloved's child is my child too."

*ponder-ponder-ponder* EAcne lesions are almost big enough to be bubos...and that would explain the hygiene link. They should appear in the armpit or groin, of course, but I can deal...as long as someone can make the disease 90% fatal and highly contagious... 

*sigh* Too many threads, too little time...I didn't understand the nature of the problem, or how to begin to search. Baaah!

It doesn't blow up, and it does work, but if it would be possible to slow it down even more I'd like it very much. A "glacier speed" would be appreciated, setting the normal acquisition to about 1/10th, since there still are various sources of bonus accrual. 

The clothing tool doesn't give me the option to select uniforms as formal attire, however, so sims won't change into them automatically (such as at weddings). Also, I loved that the hack only made the uniform option available to sims in the military career. I have no idea how to do that, and the tutorial doesn't even touch on it.

I appreciate the suggestions though.

Pescado, a couple of years ago you made a hack that allowed someone in the military career track to select his dress uniform as formal wear. I loved that hack. It isn't working anymore. I would be very appreciative if you would update it.

Is there a way to trigger the live-mode furniture placement changes, specifically scooting the chairs up to the table, while building on an unoccupied lot? (My google-phail, let me show you it.)

I play with lifetimes scaled to one day symbolizing three months, to keep them comparable to pregnancy. I never use smart milk, caps, snapdragons or other aids (macro caffeinate and pepper juice is as cheat-y as I get). I have harder grades and realistic sickness installed, along with other attempts at approximating realism. Slower skilling for me means that lives remain proportionate...my sims study for a while and then go do other things. A job promotion can take several days, assuming they actually role the want to skill up for it, and even one scholarship is a major accomplishment. Uni is hard even for knowledge sims. I'm loving it--it definitely reduces boredom--and I thought it might be worth sharing since players have discussed tying sim lifespans to the seasons and were looking for ways to still keep the game interesting.

I had trouble with the sewing machine from that set. I deleted it and my game stopped crashing.

I have found an abandoned hack to slow down skilling speed. It's available here. I tried to check with the creator, but the email address is no longer valid.

I can't vouch for all of the ones on the site, but I used the template to set my own preferred speed and it seems to be working well--no problems with hobby enthusiasm or aspirations. I have uploaded my version. It is designed so that, even with longer lifespans, maxing out seven skills is an actual challenge.

Testing now. I've wanted this since FT came out. Shiny!

I too have very sensitive skin (the red hair might have drabbed out, but the fragile skin just gets more and more delicate as I age) and there is nothing--repeat: nothing--that can reduce my face to open abrasions like stubble--might as well use sandpaper on my skin and be done with it. Beards, always, accept no substitutes, and the longer, the better! The more they grow, the softer and silkier they get.

Guaranteed to make sims run..?   

I too would like shy sims to actually be shy. Something I've contemplated that might be a little easier to code (and is true for introverted me anyway) would be for the social to rise normally but the comfort to fall proportionately to the situation--a precipitous drop when interacting with a stranger or several sims at once, such as at a party, no drop when interacting with a household member. That would avoid messing with all the set relationship behaviours while still adding a (small) dose or realism.

That's what I said. snapobjectstogrid does NOT work. If it did, I'd stop complaining, even though it's extremely clunky and awkward to use.

I want to be able to centre a single tile door between two tiles. I like symmetry. Ideally it would be easier than using boolprop snapobjectstogrid false (although if that would work, I'd settle) and more like the ease for 45 degree angle and multi-object placement.

OK, I have come up with fix. It's not neat and automatic, but so far--repeat: so far--it seems to be working well, and after a fair bit of testing I haven't had any signs of an impending meltdown, but since I am completely UNawesome, this comes with NO promises. Anyway, in SimPE under FreeTime beneath the predestined hobby field there are three fields. Enter 0x0708 in the top blank and 0 in the next two. That will drain the LTA back to close to 0. If any points have been assigned, you will also need to delete the tokens from the sim's memory. That's it. In my game the short-term aspiration meter now moves up and down again like it should, and the LTA meter is rising properly as wants are gratified.